Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Why Facebook is trying to buy WhatsApp

facebook trying to buy whatsapp over the weekend

Last night  TechCrunch reported that Facebook was in talks to buy the mobile texting service. Today, that’s been debunked as a rumor:
“The TechCrunch article is a rumor and not factually accurate,” WhatsApp said in an official statement. “We have no further information to share at the moment.”

WhatsApp was started in 2009 by two ex-Yahoo staff, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, and presently handles more than 10bn messages per day. It is a cross-platform mobile messaging app that allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS, and has an estimated 250 million users worldwide. That's more than four times as many as BBM.

WhatsApp has grown tenfold in a year.

WhatsApp has become wildy succesful as a paid app. It's currently the number one app in 114 countries and a top-five paid app in over 140 countries.

This past August, the company announced that it handles 10 billion messages a day. For comparison sakes, Apple's iMessage handles 300 billion messages per year.

If Facebook wants to control the way people connect, buying the most popular third-party messaging app will help.
 WhatsApp has proven it has a viable business plan, meaning it would do nothing but help Facebook's bottom line. 

Did you know that the first SMS was sent by Neil Papworth, a software programmer from Reading as a Christmas greeting in December 1992. Now we send 8 trillion a year, and it's the most common way for friends and family to exchange information

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